Eat National Emblems

By

Robert SkeffingtonThe Wall Street Journal Europe

Updated May 2, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

Last month's announcement that 400 kangaroos would be culled in Australia's capital, Canberra, attracted considerable international attention. The imagery was too good to ignore. Australia's national emblem, the kangaroo, was to be slaughtered en masse in the home of our parliament, high court and the national art gallery. Surely this was akin to clubbing giant pandas in Beijing or rounding up Bengal tigers in New Delhi.

Australians' connection to our national emblem, however, has always been somewhat more ambivalent than...